1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to user interfaces for tools relating to databases. More particularly, the present invention relates to graphical user interfaces for reviewing data returned in response to a query. Still more particularly, the present invention is a user interface for presenting summary information about website usage for use with web analytics tools.
2. Description of the Related Art
One of the most common sales mantras is “know your customer.” This basic tenet of selling has grown far beyond knowing who enters the store; it requires among other things, knowing what attracts customers, what they look at, how they move around a marketplace, and how long they stay. By studying customer buying habits, retailers have been able to maximize their revenues through tailoring their promotions, offerings, and even store layouts to suit their customers' preferences and habits.
Thus, website providers often wish to collect data that describes usage and visitation patterns for their websites and for individual web pages within the sites. Such information can be extremely valuable in developing usage statistics for various purposes, including for example estimating server load, determining advertising rates, identifying areas of websites that are in need of redesign, and the like.
Such information is useful in many ways, including for example collecting feedback that leads to improved web page design, determining the effect of various degrees of prominence of links and graphic elements on web pages, and determining the contribution of individual links to an eventual sale. Users, such as website administrators, often wish to analyze the results in many different ways.
Web analytics refers to the analysis of data created by website usage. For instance, web analytics can be used to mine visitor traffic data. A variety of visitor traffic data is measured such as what browser is being used, what links on a given web page were selected, whether a product was purchased, etc. There are number of web analytics tools presently available such as Site Catalyst version 11 from Omniture of Orem, Utah. These tools are able to capture data on website usage, and responsive to a user's request, display a variety of different metrics on website usage such as fallout/conversion, A/B testing, etc.
One problem such existing tools is that they present lots of raw data without any context. The data can be in response to application of specific filters or in response to very particular queries, and the data is typically presented to the user in tabular form. For example, at a given time the user may have multiple window panes showing the results of different filters and attributes. Presently, there is no mechanism to provide the user with additional context and present summary data reflecting a comparison of data before and after the filter is applied.
The prior art has provided some different graphical displays such as fallout reports, conversion reports, flow reports as well as the ability to show certain data as bar graphs or pie charts, but there presently is not a mechanism to provide summary data in the context of a detailed review of the filtered data.
Thus, there is a need for an improved graphical user interface for web analytics tools that solves the above shortcomings of the prior art.